Page 25 of The F*cking Fabulous Forties Club

‘Oh, there’s no way I’m not eating it,’ Laura says. ‘It’s just what I needed. Just like coming here to see you two was just what I needed too.’ There’s a pause. We haven’t got round to discussing the letter just yet, having agreed that the hot chips had to be prioritised. I even reminded my friends of chipulary burns and we laughed. It has been easy to believe for just a while that everything is okay in our world and that we hadn’t just unleashed the wrath of our younger selves on each other.

‘Girls, honestly. I’m so grateful for you. I didn’t expect for one moment you’d walk back into my life on Friday. I’ve wanted to call you both, to make this right, so many times, but I suppose I was just a coward.’

Niamh and I shake our heads even if part of me – the part of me who was so badly hurt by Laura’s actions – thinks that yes, she was a bit cowardly. She had been cowardly at the time in not making it right and that had continued through the years. Maybe I’m just as guilty. I didn’t have the time or mental energy, or forgiveness in me to try and make it better. Life moved on. Still, like the grief of losing a parent, it had a habit of jumping back up and biting us in the arse from time to time.

‘We can’t change the past,’ I tell her, because ultimately, I can still be hurt or cross or angry, but it’s not going to provide me with a time machine to go back and make sure things played out differently. And, truth be told, if I did have a time machine I’d probably go for something on a bigger scale – like warning the world of impending atrocities, or making sure my father had seen the doctor the day before he died instead of saying he’d wait and see how he felt in a day or two.

‘That’s true,’ Niamh says. ‘And I know because, as we’ve already established, I’m a science teacher and I can say with confidence no such technology exists.’

‘You’re a biology teacher,’ I tell her. ‘Unless time travel can be facilitated via a process of photosynthesis, I don’t think it’s quite in your field of expertise.’

‘You won’t be saying that when I suddenly have knowledge of all the winning sports fixtures next year and coin it in at the bookies,’ Niamh says.

I can’t help but laugh. ‘You’re not Biff from Back to the Future either.’

She simply shrugs and smiles before taking a slurp from her can of Diet Coke.

‘Seriously though,’ Laura says. ‘I appreciate you coming to the wake. And reaching out to me. Just being there for me, you know? And I know Mum would think the same because she loved you both very much.’

‘We loved her too,’ Niamh and I say, almost in unison.

‘And we love you,’ Niamh adds.

Laura grabs a napkin and wipes her mouth, and then grabs another and wipes her eyes. There’s a pause.

‘So, the letter…’ she says. ‘I don’t know what I expected from it but the truth is, it really unsettled me. Made me think about my life way too much. It made me question myself. Am I where I’m meant to be? Did I do everything I wanted? Becca, you read your letter, did it make you feel weird?’

‘Yes and no,’ I admit. ‘I feel really disappointed in myself, I suppose. I’ve not exactly set the world aflame with my talent, have I? I’m single, heading for fifty and alone. But I’m still glad I read it.’

‘And you, Niamh?’

Niamh gives her head a shake. ‘Not read it. And I’m not sure I want to. I don’t want to be unsettled or disappointed in myself. Thank you very much. I’m not sure any good would come from opening that particular can of emotional worms.’

‘Emotional Worms would be a brilliant name for a rock band,’ I muse.

‘But sixteen-year-old us wanted now us to be able to read these, Niamh,’ Laura interjects, ignoring my frankly brilliant suggestion. ‘It was important to us at time so don’t we owe it to our younger selves?’

‘There are a lot of things that were important to sixteen-year-old us that we wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot barge pole now. Tom Cruise, for example. He was the ultimate ride to young us, but now he gives me the dry bokes with all his Scientology carry on. I’m strictly Team Nicole and Team Katie,’ Niamh says, in the voice she uses when she wants to make it very clear that the discussion is not one worth pursuing. I love my friend with every part of me and I would lay down my life for her in a heartbeat, but when Niamh has decided something, you can bet your life on it that the lady is not for turning. I have no desire to push this further and unleash her scary teacher voice.

‘The worst thing in my letter,’ Laura says, folding her chip paper over her remaining food and pushing it away, ‘is that I said I wanted to make sure my mum got to live the life she missed out on by having us so young.’

Her voice wobbles and I feel a lump form in my throat.

‘But that’s lovely, that you wanted that for her,’ I reassure her.

‘It would be, if I wasn’t such a sanctimonious bitch about it,’ she says. ‘I mean, I don’t think I was purposefully mean, but you know how teenagers think they know absolutely everything and have 100 times the insight of their parents?’

‘Oh God, yes,’ Niamh and I say, this time in perfect unison.

‘And just wait ’til we all get landed with Generation Z or whatever the latest iteration of crotch gremlins are collectively known as. I love Fiadh dearly but her teenage years are going to kick my arse,’ Niamh adds.

‘I will get my mum to say a novena for you,’ I say, even though my lovely mum is not the novena-saying type.

‘Can she say one for me that I’m able to survive to the end of term without losing it completely with Year 11?’ Niamh asks.

‘Of course,’ I say, before turning my attention back to Laura who is obviously still struggling with the contents of her letter. ‘Are you okay, love?’ I ask.

Laura shrugs.

---